Saw the long delayed Philip Guston show at Museum of Fine Arts Boston, “Philip Guston Now.” One is encouraged to take an “Emotional Preparedness” card before going in to view the exhibition. I’m told the brief text was written by a trauma, anxiety, and depression specialist. It’s a lot of preparation for “discomfort.” What one gets once you step into the galleries is a beautiful and powerful exhibition of Guston’s work that lays out the developments, shifts, and continuities in his work, and his thinking, both about the social and political world outside of his studio and, equally—if not more importantly—how to grapple with art history and painting and develop and find ones own voice and language within that history. There is enough work included in this exhibition to see the back and forth conversation Guston was having with himself as he finally came into his own. The hooded figures are here, of course, but then there’s so much more, including works that have never been seen before. Definitely worth seeing. I’d leave the controversy out in the lobby if you go to see it, along with the skittish and defensive institutional posture, and the narrowed context this provokes, and let the man and his work speak for themselves. It’s a much more expansive and engaging conversation.